The Environmental Design of Electrical Equipment (EDEEA) Act, currently before Congress, proposes stringent limits on the amount of hazardous materials that can be used in electroindustry products.

The materials include lead, mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium and two flame retardants. This legislation will provide a uniform national standard for the United States and help ensure that equipment built to US standards will also comply with ‘Restriction on Hazardous Substance’ (RoHS) standards for the European Union and China. This will help American manufacturers access these markets.

“For manufacturers of electrical equipment that will be covered by this new law, an important step will be to ensure that the components going into their products are fully compliant with the new standards” comments Christian Fell, General Manager of sensor supplier FRABA Inc. “All of the position, optical and safety sensors we build meet the hazardous materials standards for Europe, China and now, the United States. Further, the rotary encoders we manufacture have a self-powered system for keeping track of their absolute position during power outages or shutdowns. This eliminates the need for backup batteries and removes another possible source of hazardous materials. Equipment manufacturers or systems integrators can be assured that they won’t have compliance problems arising from the use of any of our devices.”